Italy OECD black jersey for graduates: they are few, the youngest have "relatively scarce" employment opportunities and in general they earn less than their colleagues in the other major countries. Also because they are concentrated in the humanities, which are less in demand on the labor market than scientific and economic ones.
In the annual report on the education systems of the 35 member countries, the OECD underlines the low propensity for university studies in Italy and analyzes its causes. The starting figure is that in the Peninsula adults with degrees (25-64 years) are only 18%, one of the lowest levels in the OECD, equal to half the average. For young adults (25-34 years) the gap is smaller, but still significant: in Italy 26% have a degree against 43% in the OECD.
The low levels of tertiary education in Italy - explains the study - "may be partly due to insufficient job prospects and low financial returns" (-22% compared to the OECD average), or to "relatively low" wages for graduates. This makes Italy an anomaly in the OECD university landscape, where there is generally an inverse relationship between the share of graduates and their salary advantage. According to the report, 80% of 25-64 year-olds with a tertiary education in Italy have a job, but the employment rate drops to 64% for the youngest age group (25-34), the lowest level in the countries industrialized, where the average is 83%.
In Italy, the employment rate of young graduates is also exceeded by that of graduates from technical-professional institutes, which is equal to 68% and this too is a rare fact in the OECD.
As Francesco Avvisati, the organization's economist who is one of the authors of the study, explains, “employment outcomes are decidedly better for degrees in scientific or economic fields, closer to the needs of the world of work. Italy has fewer graduates than other countries, especially in these fields, because most of the graduates are in the humanities faculties, both among adults and among young people”. In fact, 30% of Italian graduates between the ages of 25-64 obtained a degree in the humanities and this is the highest percentage in the OECD, compared to 24% in the STEM field (science, engineering and mathematics) and 22% in economic and legal disciplines.
Among recent graduates, the share of those who have chosen the humanities-arts disciplines is even higher: 39% against 23% OECD, 25% of the STEM field (OECD average 22%) and 14% economics-legal (OECD 23 %). The impact on work for 25-64 year olds is clear: for the STEM sector the employment rate is 82% (85% for engineering), for the economic-legal sector it is 81% and for the humanities it drops at 74%. The gap is even wider among women, more often with degrees in the humanities and with the quasi-monopoly of degrees in the education sector.
The report notes, moreover, that the majority of young people between 15 and 19 are enrolled in technical-professional studies (42%), which precisely guarantee good employment rates compared to other pathways. "Italy has an important vocational education system and it is expected that 53% of the population will achieve a vocational upper secondary diploma during their lifetime", notes the OECD.
As Avvisati points out, what is lacking in Italy, however, is a system that enriches professional training throughout the working life. The participation of adults in training courses – formal and otherwise – thus remains among the lowest in the OECD.
But how much does a degree make? According to the OECD, in Italy the annual salaries of those who have a degree and work full time are 41% higher than those of secondary school graduates, against the OECD average +56% and, for example, +66% of the Germany.
